


Around the Reckless Magic of Your Youth

by angelgazing



Category: Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2010-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Julys of bickering, banter and badness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Around the Reckless Magic of Your Youth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [victoria_p (musesfool)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/gifts).



> For [](http://musesfool.livejournal.com/profile)[**musesfool**](http://musesfool.livejournal.com/) for her birthday! I'm only a fourth of the year late! And thanks, as always, to [](http://luzdeestrellas.livejournal.com/profile)[**luzdeestrellas**](http://luzdeestrellas.livejournal.com/) for the beta gig.

"You're bluffing," Danny says, smirking with his eyes narrowed. He's got his legs crossed at the ankle and is leaning back on his hands. He hasn't looked at his cards in three minutes, which is something of a record for him in the two weeks that Rusty's been keeping count.

He's itching to peek though, and Rusty knows him well enough to know it. All fifteen-year-old boys know that fifteen is not meant to be spent learning, but Danny never got the memo. "I'm really not."

"You're bluffing and you're doing it badly."

Rusty shrugs, lazily, and watches the waves of the ocean for a shark or something resembling exciting for a while before giving this up as one of those times when Danny will not let go. "I do not bluff badly," he says. And, "You being stubborn will not make the thought that I'm bluffing any more true."

"I will buy you ice cream if you're not lying."

"You'll steal me ice cream if I am."

"I won't," Danny answers swiftly, and scrapes the edge of his cards with his thumbnail. Itchingly.

Rusty just shrugs, because they both know the truth. His cards are on his thigh, peeking under the edges of his cutoff shorts, and it's too hot for anything but lounging, so that's what he does. Lounges. In a way which does not resemble the way that Danny has posed himself, just in case any volleyball game participants decide to glance over.

It's too hot for that, and it's just edging past noon, and Rusty's got sand in places where sand should never be and he doesn't even care. He thinks maybe July will drag on forever, and he'd be okay with that. He's got a can of root beer half buried in the sand next to him, in the shadows under the dock.

Danny, skin browned from July as much as Rusty's freckled by it, and drowning in his calm, really, _really_ wants to look at his cards. His self-imposed lessons have at least served to keep Rusty entertained when everything else lulls. (Something everything else has decided to do all summer.) He plays with them, straightening the stack and fanning it out again, nearly burying them, just in case, and it's the biggest tell that ever told, but so long as Rusty's the one winning, he can wait until it's more convenient to point that out.

The game's gone absolutely nowhere for a very, very long time.

"Amelia Goodwin."

Danny blinks once, twice, and then closes his eyes for a second in the universally accepted gesture of "oh, fuck, right, of course." And Rusty, deep in the arms of summer laziness, doesn't bother to explain further. It works for them.

"So no aces," Danny mutters, looking at his cards and grinning like that'll make him somehow less wrong as he peeks over them. "Vanilla?" he asks, like he isn't resigned to his fate.

"Yeah," Rusty answers, and adds before Danny can ask, "Go fish."

\---

Rusty drags his fingers across the carpet, back and forth and back again, in time to Danny pacing drunkenly across his tiny, tiny living room. There's an open bottle of horrible, cheap wine sitting on the table.

Danny sways with every step he takes, wobbles like he's going to fall over with the next one. His knee hits the coffee table and he wobbles and the bottle of wine wobbles, and horrible as it is, Rusty's pretty sure he'd save it. Danny's on his own tonight.

It's taken a few years, but Rusty's learned that when it comes to Danny, you cannot just ignore the stupidity until it goes away. Sometimes, you've got to let him fall on his face. Then rub his nose in it. So Rusty says, "Well, that was fun."

Danny paces, and his left shoe is under the kitchen table but his right's still on, so the balance thing is extra difficult. And that wasn't even Rusty's doing. "It was, wasn't it?" Danny says, and manages to not slur, or sound bitter, and still stay vertical, so it's possible he's actually better off than Rusty predicted. It's possible he's better off than _Rusty_.

"I hope that after all that you managed to get her number," Rusty says, instead of doing something smart like passing out until their court date. Or until Danny comes up with a crazy, stupid plan to get them out of this. He's kind of hoping for the second one.

"She got us arrested."

"So, you're calling her in the morning?"

"I thought I'd wait until I wasn't hung over."

"That would probably improve your chances. Since she thinks alcohol is a tool of the devil and everything." This was one of those stories, Rusty decided, that they'd be telling all the little con-artists and thieves they'd one day rule over as rulers. He really wanted minions. Someone he could send out for decent booze at two in the morning when he was too drunk to do hard tasks. Like stand. "And money. She also thinks that money is evil."

"Yeah." Danny grins, making exaggerated gestures with his hands that threaten to _finally_ knock him off balance. "But did you see her rack?"

"No, Danny, I didn't. You know why?" If Danny looked like he was going to answer—and Rusty couldn't be sure because Danny'd taken off to the kitchen—Rusty just plowed right on ahead. "Because she was wearing a cardigan. A cardigan that strongly resembled one that my grandmother died in."

"You've got no imagination. No sense of adventure."

"She thinks alcohol and money are tools of the devil, and she wears _cardigans_ that button up to her ears. There's no adventure there that isn't blue. _I'll_ have sex with you before she will."

Danny laughs, suddenly in front of him, knocking Rusty's shoulder with his wrist. "Alright, but first I've got a plan to get us out of this court thing."

"About time," Rusty says, and sits up.

\---

It's only natural, he supposes, that they hit twenty-five and know entirely too much about each other. They knew too much about each other at fifteen. But Rusty's been working up a good are-you-mental-unstable-what-are-you-thinking-stop-being-an-idiot lecture for two days now, because every couple of years his blood sugar is low and he's got the urge to shake Danny until his teeth rattle.

But Danny, of course, knows this. So he buys Rusty a pizza with everything on it, in hopes that furious chewing will ease the urge to hear teeth rattle around in the empty space of Danny's head.

Rusty, naturally, knows that this is what will happen, and while he can never say no to a pizza with everything—even pineapple, which Danny hates on the level that most people hate things like anchovies and rapists—knowing that he's being played makes the need to shake Danny all the more powerful.

They know each other too well, and it's disrupting their system.

And they both know that too.

"Incan—"

"No," Rusty says, and swallows. "No way."

"It's a—'

"Impossible job. You can't get them fenced. We'd get caught. I don't want to go to prison, Danny; I've got too much to live for out here," he says, and waves a piece of his pizza under Danny's nose.

"I don't get to finish sentences anymore," Danny says, leaning back against the arm of the couch like he's been defeated. "We're like an old married couple. Without the sex."

"So exactly like an old married couple then."

Danny pauses, tilts his head and makes a face. "Let's just go with that, yeah. And try to never think of the alternative ever again."

"I don't know, Danny, your mom—"

"Don't finish that sentence," Danny says, closer to losing his cool than he has been in years. He's looking a little green, because he knows what Rusty was going to say anyway.

"I think Saul—"

"Do not—"

Rusty laughs, because Danny's got his eyes screwed tight to block out all kinds of mental images, and he's got his favorite pizza, and ice cream in the fridge, and he's half of an old married couple and he doesn't have to finish his own sentences if he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to make anyone's teeth rattle anymore, and it'll be at least another two months before Danny brings up the masks again, and they know each other too well.

Which would be his excuse, if he needed one, but there's something to be said for _not_. For never really.

Danny isn't surprised. He knows this is coming and Rusty is slow enough to let him _know_, when he moves forward and kisses him. Slow and thorough, like maybe he means it, the way Danny didn't when they were sixteen, like he's making a point.

It's not often he bothers being the one that has a point to make.

He sits back and tosses a piece of pineapple at Danny.

\---

Her name is Tess, and Rusty hates her in the way he hates complications. She's walking through the museum, and Danny's looking at a painting for the first time since last May, so Rusty knows right away. She passes by with a faint smile at Danny, like she's trying not to smile, and Rusty _knows_ that she's going to be a complication.

And he will hate her for it, even if only in a very bland way. Hate takes too much energy to do right, takes too much effort and makes things messy.

Not as messy as Danny's going to make them, but Rusty's reached a level of zen about Danny fucking things up. He accepts that it will happen, and controls what he can.

He can't control Tess, and he's heard more than enough about her already to know Danny doesn't stand a chance in hell of making anything work. She's buttoned up, and Danny's back to making vague references about adventures and challenges and none of this is going to end well.

Rusty _knows it_.

"I'd say I can't believe you'd be this stupid," Rusty sighs, "but it'd be a lie."

Danny shrugs, like maybe he's going to pretend to be sheepish even though they're too old for that now. "Can you believe the security here?"

"Like taking candy from a baby."

"Like pie."

"Pie is not easy," Rusty says, and cringes. "As well you know, Betty Crocker."

"Hey, but I finally found something you wouldn't eat. I thought that day would never come."

"It's too bad," Rusty sighs again, knocking their elbows as he turns to walk away. There's a guy outside selling hotdogs from a cart, and he's seen all he needs to here. Danny's half a step behind, and Rusty amuses himself for at least twenty seconds thinking about very apt metaphors.

"You can't be serious."

"I really can be. Especially if I put my mind to it."

"Russ—"

"It's just asking for trouble."

"We _like_ trouble."

"We don't like prison," Rusty says, and fishes around in his pocket for cash once they're outside. The sun is summer hot, and he's never been more grateful for the creation of sunglasses in his life.

"Oh, but prison would like you," Danny answers--practically _purrs_, in his favorite taunting tone of voice. It's like he's ten and daring Rusty to dip Melinda Barker's braid in the paint again.

"Of course they would." Rusty's glad at least one of them has grown up. "Seems as good a reason as any to avoid the place."

"You'd rather be around people that don't like you?"

"Well, I do spend a lot of time with you. How many times have I ended up in a jail cell?"

"That went on your record?"

"Rap sheet. We're out of grade school now."

"Fine," Danny says, and sighs. After a pause long enough for Rusty to have a hotdog in his possession, he asks, "So what did you think?"

"I don't like redheads."

\---

July feels like it could last forever, the _city_ feels like it could last forever, hot and buzzing, busy and working beneath him. He's baking in the sun, on the roof, half sitting, half lying in a purple plastic lawn chair. He'll have freckles on his shoulders later, and he's pretty sure he doesn't care like he did when he was younger.

Right now he's got a very alcoholic frozen drink, a month's worth of travel magazines, and the blueprints of the Ritz-Carlton in South Beach and too many details left to iron out. He doesn't, of course, because the sun is hot and it makes everything hazy. Makes Rusty lazy like it always has.

"Excuse me, ma'am, your giant, blue frozen whatever is melting."

"Shut up."

"What _is_ that, a Cosmopolitan?"

"Shut up," Rusty says again, and isn't smiling even a little.

"My wife drinks those, you know."

"How does your wife feel about us leaving for South Beach on Wednesday?" Rusty prides himself on his ability to ask a question like it's what he wanted to know all along. "And why are you here, taking away valuable me time, when you could be arguing with her about paint colors, again?"

"Paint colors were always more your thing, Roberta," Danny says, and smirks, and stands in front of Rusty to block the sun. "You're going to freckle, you know."

"What, suddenly you don't like my freckles anymore?"

"Why Wednesday?"

"Fourth of July weekend," Rusty answers, and somehow manages to not convey what a stupid question that is in his tone. "Extra travelers. Extra revenue. Really, Daniel, I think you may be slipping."

Danny laughs, sticks his hands in the pockets of his slacks and rocks back and forth on his feet. He's wearing a tie that he stole from Rusty's closet the last time Tess kicked him out, and the sun shines really fucking brightly on it. His sleeves are rolled up, the tie loose, the top button of his shirt undone.

He looks so miserable, so very fucking _hot_, that it makes Rusty grin. And take a nice long drink through a straw with bends and twists and curves.

"Good?" Danny asks, because he knows.

"Cold," Rusty answers, and nods. There's sweat beading at Danny's hairline and neither of them are going to win. "Wednesday at the latest. We need to get our foot in the door, and you aren't charming enough to get all the setup set up in twenty-four hours."

"Basher—"

"Especially if you spend four of those hours on the phone arguing."

"It's cute."

"It's not."

"I meant your jealousy." Danny laughs, takes his hands out of his pockets to rest on the arms of Rusty's chair as he leans over him, and the shift of weight is enough to make them both rock. He kisses Rusty, like he does when he doesn't like the answer, and steals his drink. "The Inca—"

July feels like it could last forever. "No."

"Happy thirty-fifth."

"Go fish."


End file.
